Case | Fintech

Building trust when it comes to money

The task

There is no single key to successful fintech PR in Germany. This is mainly due to the fact that the typical fintech company no longer exists. The market has matured. Alongside young start-ups with the usual challenges of market entry, such as creating visibility and building a brand, there are now established companies that are struggling with issues such as crisis communication, realignment and market consolidation.

Fintechs usually look to us for support with one or more of the following tasks:

creating brand awareness and visibility in target media and target group
Thought leadership and C-level positioning to establish a pioneering role in the competition
building trust in the target groups with product PR & communicating the business case
managing crisis situations

Selected references

SME financing

For the online lending platforms Funding Circle and Iwoca, we developed SME campaigns focusing on the financing problems of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Money laundering

Hawk AI uses the computing power of the cloud and AI to support money laundering prevention at financial institutions. Our task: to become visible as a reliable partner for banks, payment service providers and fintechs and to awaken the topic of AML from its slumber.

Investment

For the savings app PEAKS, which makes investing in ETFs easy and accessible for everyone, we developed Germany-specific messages and topic references for more visibility in top media.

Our approach

Brand awareness and demand in the target group requires visibility in the media. Start-ups often lack the gravitas for this. Established players, on the other hand, often lack their own relevant news pipeline to actively shape coverage in a positive way. We therefore use the tool of a news radar to develop messages and storylines for our clients, which we link to public debates of overriding relevance and place in tier 1 media.

Our consistently target group-centric approach to strategy development focuses less on the features of products and services and more on the everyday problems of users that the products actually solve. The topics range from inadequate pension provision for women and the gender pay gap, to SME issues such as the digitalization backlog and the consequences of the pandemic, to problems with the scalability of financial processes and compliance. Surveys, studies, keyword research and focus group work reveal where the shoe pinches; we develop service-oriented content for our clients that is heard.

Results

40+

placements in half a year? No problem if the mix of thought leadership topics, service-oriented content and product PR is right. The triad ensures regular coverage.

70%

of coverage we achieve on average for our fintech clients is in tier 1 media, including placements in relevant publications such as Finanz-Szene, FinanceFWD, Handelsblatt, WELT and Börsen-Zeitung.

SME

play a very special role in Germany - and face very specific challenges. Thanks to our target group-oriented approach, we generate topics that attract interest in SME media as well as in the daily and business press.

The open and lively exchange with Oseon contributed greatly to our ability to effectively place our sometimes complex and target group-specific topics in the media.
Pelin Wolk, former communications lead, Funding Circle Germany

Selected coverage

Special case: Crisis communication

It doesn't have to be a hacker attack and the loss of sensitive customer data that plunges a fintech into a communications crisis.

We support companies in the early detection and prevention of crises, develop messages, Q&As and crisis plans in order to be prepared for the worst. And when things get tough, we navigate them through the waves to secure the trust of customers and investors. This was also the case for Kreditech (now “Monedo”), which had to overcome a number of critical situations in 2018 and 2019, from a major funding round to the restructuring of the management board.